1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of content management, and more particularly relates to content management in an internet environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Content management generally relates to storing and administering various types of data files. One of the challenges associated with known content management systems is that the data is presented and organized within a single hierarchy. For small amounts of content, such as that found in small web sites, a single hierarchy may suffice, but when dealing with a large amount of data, users who are only interested in a small set of the data can easily be overwhelmed. Further, the single hierarchy approach limits the ways content can be accessed, access controlled and referenced at runtime, generally referred to as ACLed (Access Control List Serviced).
It is known to use proprietary text markup inside of managed HTML pages. The general architecture in which the proprietary text markup is used is referred to as a tag architecture; the small additional tags that form the proprietary text markups are generally referred to as custom taglets. This proprietary text is processed by content management tools statically, and results in a simple replacement scheme for the proprietary text. However, this schema doesn""t allow the running of complex logic at runtime, and forces users to use a proprietary markup language.
It has been discovered that providing a classification based content management system provides a content management system in which large amounts of content may be quickly and easily managed. More specifically, the classification based content management system of the present invention uses metadata to classify the content in such a way that the content may be quickly and easily managed. The classification based content management system provides advantages in a variety of aspects of the operation of the system. The aspects of the operation of the system include storage, retrieval, access control and workflow management.
More specifically, in one aspect, the invention relates to a method for managing content. The method includes storing a plurality of items of content within a database; generating metadata for each of the plurality of items of content, the metadata including classification information for classifying the content; and storing, in the database, the classification information associated with a particular item of content, the classification information being related to the item of content.
In another aspect, the invention relates to a content management system which includes an application portion, an interface portion coupled to the application portion and a database portion. The database portion stores a plurality of items of content. The database portion includes metadata for each of the plurality of items of content. The metadata includes classification information for classifying the content. The database stores the classification information associated with a particular item of content and the classification information is related to the particular item of content.
In another aspect, the invention relates to a database for use with a content management system. The database includes a document portion and a classification portion. The document portion stores a plurality of items of content. The classification portion stores classification information that is associated with a particular item of content. The classification information is related to the particular item of content.
In another aspect, the invention relates to a method for managing content where a plurality of items of content are stored within a database. The method includes providing metadata for each of the plurality of items of content, the metadata including classification information for classifying the content, the classification information being related to the item of content; and accessing, in the database, the content based upon the classification information associated with a particular item of content.